War Stories
Sandow Birk, Invasion, Woodcut, 48″x96″, 2007.
In 2006, HuiPress of Hawaii worked with Los Angeles-based artist Sandow Birk to create his Depravities of War series. The project consists of 15 large-scale woodcuts (48″x96″) based on 17th century French artist Jacques Callot’s etching series, “The Miseries and Misfortunes of War.” The contextualization of current events through the lens of of art history is one of Birk’s common themes.
From a 2007 LA Times article by Sharon Mizota:
The images in “Depravities” often quote Callot directly, cloaking his compositions in the trappings of present-day Iraq and the U.S. “If he had a picture of a street with a tree on the right, then I would do a street with a tree on the right,” Birk says. For reference, he amassed a thick folder of war images from newspapers and websites. “If I needed a house, I would find a photo of an actual house in Baghdad and try to use that.”
Sandow Birk, Destruction, Woodcut, 48″x96″, 2007.
And a low-res version of the corresponding Callot…
Jacques Callot, The Destruction of a Monastery, Etching, 3″x6″?, 1633.
The original Callot etchings are actually quite small- interestingly, Birk’s original drawings for the monumental woodcuts were drawn at a similar scale as the Callots and then photo-mechanically enlarged, transferred to the blocks and carved.
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I saw these prints recently at American University’s Katzen Art Museum. The scale and quality of the prints is very impressive, but I think the images function better at a smaller size. It’s hard to get enough distance from the prints for the compositions to resolve themselves.
I noticed that they were at AU. It would be nice to have some installation pics to see scale. I can imagine that the sizing-up of small drawings would be a little off proportionally. That’s actually why I included that info in the post- it seems relevant to the final product. It may not translate so well in terms of media but no doubt the size is an advantage in terms of getting attention for the series.